Some types of wireless communications are very bursty in nature, i.e., the volume of data to be transferred, and the amount of data to be transferred per unit of time, may vary widely. Some types of data also have short latency requirements (e.g., interactive streaming video data), so that delays in transferring that data can have undesirable effects. Managing all these requirements at the same time can be difficult when allocating channel time to multiple devices in a network. To partially address this issue, a capability has been defined to provide for requesting an extension or a truncation of a device's currently assigned channel time allocation (CTA) if it turns out that the currently assigned CTA provides either too little time, or more time than is needed, to perform the necessary transmissions. If the device still has unused time after its transmissions are complete, it can transmit a truncation message to give that unused channel time back for possible reallocation to another device. Similarly, if the device is going to need more time than it has been allocated, it can transmit an extension message to request that its current CTA be extended, if such time is available on the channel. However, these requests only allow a device to extend or truncate within the current superframe. When the next superframe occurs, the device has to request the extension or truncation again. This can result in excessive overhead, which can reduce overall throughput.